


Detour

by blindmadness



Series: Crossover and AU Adventures [8]
Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Cabeswater - Freeform, Canon Era, Gen, but unspecific about it, handwavey geography, raven cycle au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:58:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10529433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindmadness/pseuds/blindmadness
Summary: The Parks department takes a call and ends up in a place they didn't expect. (A Raven Cycle crossover/AU.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it's sort of an AU in that no one from the books is showing up, but sort of a crossover in that this setting wouldn't exist without people from the books, so... [hands]? WHO KNOWS. I'm also "who knows"ing the presence of Cabeswater in Indiana and the actual timeframe that this is taking place in; I'm assuming pre-S7 and post-mid-S4, but I'm not bothering for more specifics than that.
> 
> This is definitely one of the sillier things I've written in recent memory, and I had a lot of fun with it; this gang does not thrive in fantasy settings and it's hilarious to contemplate.

“Guys?” Leslie asks as she brushes back the branch of a tree. “All of these trees kind of—look the same. Has anyone been keeping track of where we are?” 

“It feels like we’ve been walking _forever,”_ Tom grumbles, glaring down at the ground. “These shoes are _not_ meant for so much outdoor activity. I was trying to do as little walking as possible in them. Or ever.”

“Yeah, that’s why you work in a parks department, right?” Ann mutters.

“No, guys, seriously,” Leslie insists, turning around to look at everyone gathered along the haphazard dirt path. “How long have we been walking down here? Has anyone else noticed that the foliage has totally changed?”

“Hey, you’re right,” Ben says in surprise, turning to look at a low-hanging tree. “Most of these trees should be in full flower, but—the leaves are all bright green. Like in the summer. Is that normal?”

Leslie doesn’t really have an answer. They had gotten a call to check out weird noises in a nearby forest, and she’d brought everyone who could be spared, just in case something dangerous was happening. Donna stayed behind to watch her car (if anything dangerous _was_ happening, she’d reasoned, no way in hell it was touching her Benz), and April, it seems, has just disappeared somewhere—

“Andy!” Leslie says impatiently, catching sight of him—yet again—attempting to eat some berries from one of the ubiquitous thorny bushes. “Stop that. Where’s April?”

“Uh,” he says, scratching his head as he glances around the path. “She went to check out that big creepy tree over there, I think—she’s probably poking around inside it—”

“Oh my god,” Leslie mutters, and raises her voice to yell, “April! Get out of the big creepy tree! Oh, god,” she says again, looking at her watch. “Ugh, we’ve been here for less than—” And she scowls down at her watch, pauses, then shakes her wrist and looks down again. “Uh,” she says. “Babe? What time do you have?”

Ben looks at his own watch, and his eyes widen in alarm. “Uh,” he says in turn. “Four oh one? But that’s impossible, we left the _office_ at—”

“Three-thirty, I know,” Leslie says, and she’s starting to feel very much like they’re at the beginning of a horror movie. “And it took us like twenty minutes to drive here, and we’ve been walking for—a while, definitely more than ten minutes—”

A distressed wail from Tom interrupts her; he’s staring at his phone in horrified dismay. “There’s no signal! And my clock’s stopped, too! What is this place?”

“An endless, time-stopping forest with no cell reception that cycles through seasons and you can get lost in forever,” Ron comments from the rock where he’s sitting, arms crossed, looking up at the leaves with obvious pleasure. “Seems like my kind of place. Can my office be here? On this rock?”

Leslie doesn’t dignify this with a response, spinning in an anxious semicircle. “We have to get out of here. What direction did we just come from?”

“Babe!” April exclaims, running out from the big creepy tree—disheveled, several twigs in her hair—and grabbing Andy’s hands, a huge smile on her face. “Babe, you have to see this tree. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, it showed me this total awful nightmare once I was inside—”

_“Whoa,”_ Andy gasps in awe. “Can I go in too?”

_“No,”_ Leslie groans in exasperation as the two of them run towards the tree. “You guys, stay here, don’t go further into the weird forest until we figure out what’s going—”

And then the trees begin to whistle as the wind picks up, blowing all around them, and the rustle of the wind in the leaves gets louder and louder until it sounds like—like _words._

“Whoa,” Ann whispers, soft and awed and sounding more than a little afraid.

“What—what is that?” Leslie demands, quickly getting there herself. “What’s going on? Are those trees _talking?_ How is that possible?”

“It shouldn’t be,” Ben says—stating the obvious, of course, but someone had to point it out. “But it sounds like—” He pauses, listening, and then looks even more bewildered. “It sounds like they’re speaking… Latin.”

“Latin?” Leslie demands, stunned.

_“Latin,”_ Ron says as if it’s a curse, looking disgusted as he stands, kicking at the dirt in anger. “Great! The one thing that could ruin this place!” He storms off back in the direction they came, yelling into the forest, “I hope these _European trees_ are happy with themselves!”


End file.
